Cayman and a hot tin roof
More than fifty per cent of the Cayman S‘s parts come from its bigger 911 sibling and 29 per cent from the open-topped Boxster, but the new Porsche is very much its own car on the road.
January 25, 2006
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Built from the Boxster and 911 parts, Porsche's new Cayman S rides the middle ground between two of the German manufacturer's powerhouse models. Andrew Heasley reports.
The roar of the flat-six engine behind our spines fills the cabin as we dart around hairpin corners, the seats hugging tightly to hold our torso in place against the building lateral G-forces. Traversing the famed corkscrew roads in the Adelaide Hills is an exercise in snappy gear changes and strong prods on the brakes and accelerator, with quick steering responses.
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It's an occasion that's been eagerly anticipated: a day behind the wheel of Porsche's new two-seat coupe, the Cayman S.
The Cayman S coupe, now making its Australian showroom debut, is pure Porsche: sporting, powerful, agile and exciting - all the descriptions mass manufacturers typically employ to imbue some interest in dull family saloons.
So good is this new Porsche - positioned price- and performance-wise to slot into the range between the Boxster S and the 911 - that it makes the 911 look, well, a little irrelevant.
The Cayman S offers almost all the 911's tactile, visual and aural excitement available on public roads - for $50,000 less. The flip side is that the Cayman S can also be regarded as an expensive ($40,000 more) Boxster with a metal roof.
The truth is, the Cayman S is a bit of both. Rolf Frech, director of Complete Vehicle Engineering at the German manufacturer's Stuttgart headquarters, has been involved with the Cayman project since its inception and says the Cayman was born of a different philosophy to the Boxster.
'Why did we decide to build it? There was an opening between the Boxster and the 911. It had to be emotionally younger than the 911 but tougher than the Boxster,' Mr Frech says. 'We wanted to make the car muscular.'
Mr Frech says the decision to introduce an 'S' version of the car first (unlike what the company has done with its other models) was made because the performance targets had been set to sit as a feeder to the 911.
What's implicit in this explanation is that if the current car were designated a plain Cayman, then a high 'S' variant would encroach on the capabilities of the 911.
Underlining this is the car's composition: 51 per cent of its parts come from the 911, 29 per cent from the Boxster and 20 per cent is pure Cayman, Mr Frech says.
The process to develop the Cayman occurred while the Boxster was undergoing development for its latest 987 guise. But Mr Frech says the project was not going to proceed until the company was happy with the Cayman's design.
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'We made a lot of design studies with the Cayman,' he says. Twelve months were spent doing computer simulations of how a fixed-roof Boxster would behave.
In 2002, Porsche made some disguised 'mules' to test out the mechanicals, then a few hand-built prototypes. Integration of the roof-line into the rear of the car had to look natural, Mr Frech says.
Now the car has landed in Australia and the first batch is making its way to Porsche dealers. What do you get for your $148,500 entry price?
Two seats, a six-speed manual or five-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission (ups the price $7000), a 1340 kg coupe body with a large hatchback, a midship 3.4-litre water-cooled flat-six engine featuring Porsche's VarioCam valve timing, 217 kW of power and 340 Nm of torque, rear-wheel-drive, a 0-100 km/h sprint time of
5.4 seconds for the manual and 6.1 seconds for the auto, and top speeds (which are academic here) of 275 km/h for the manual and 267 km/h for the auto.
From the outside, the car is no Bride of Frankenstein job: the new roof sweeps harmoniously from the A-pillar through to the top of the rear bumper. It's a tightly pursed rear end, with accentuated curved guards over the rear flanks.
Finishing off the rear is a small electronically raising tail spoiler that moves upwards into the air stream at 120 km/h for extra downforce - though you're unlikely to ever see it legally in action on Victorian roads.
The rear three-quarter angle is arguably the car's most appealing, and probably the view of the car most motorists are likely to see. In the metal, it looks about the size of an early-'80s 911.
The wide-opening lift-back offers the convenience of a hatchback and is more useful in everyday situations than the extra seats found in the 911, which can only be accessed from tilting the front seats.
Indeed, for a strict two-seater, the Cayman is a relatively practical beast. It has 260 litres of rear cargo space (it's shallow but broad) and 150 litres under the front bonnet. Its lift-back, however, means there's no room for a sliding sunroof.
The flanks of the car house Boxster-style vertical vents ahead of the rear wheel arches. The vent on the right feeds cooling air to the radiator, the one on the left is the air intake for the engine.
The front looks similar to the 911, even more so as a view in the rear-vision mirror.
There's the fire-red, four-pot brake calipers sitting inside the 18-inch, five-spoke alloys, though 19-inch alloys and high-performance, yellow-painted, ceramic composite brakes can be optioned. There's no spare wheel or jack. Instead, there's a can of goop and a compressor.
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Dual exhausts come together in the centre of the rear bumper, giving the car a wasp-like stinger.
Hop inside and you'll find a console that's very Boxster: a triple cluster of dials (central tacho with digital speed readout, a 300 km/h speedo to the left, temperature and fuel gauges to the right), oval vents and a central cluster of controls for audio, climate control, stability control, and if fitted, Porsche's PASM electronically adjustable suspension.
The seats are incredibly firm in the Porsche way, though the car is capable of generating so much lateral grip through corners that extra side bolstering for the passenger wouldn't go astray - the passenger has no steering wheel to hang on to.
In the carpeted, stepped-tier cargo bay there's a removable net to hold the shopping in place. There's also a small, flip-down lid that reveals two caps for fluids for the engine; one for adding oil, the other for coolant.
To keep oil fumes from penetrating into the cabin, the flip-lid has a rubber seal - but one can't help but wonder what would happen in an oil change if the oil accidentally blurted out while being poured: it would soak into the rear carpet and smell out the cabin.
Crank the key and the cabin fills with the distinctive sound only a Porsche engine makes. It's an abrasive but melodious rhythm that pulses through the car's frame.
Engage first, tread on the throttle and ease the clutch and the car moves off the line with all the fuss of a Corolla. There's no temperamental antics here.
The Cayman S is as easy to drive in city traffic as any mass-produced car. Sure the steering, clutch and gear shift are stiffer than a Toyota, but there's a robotic precision about how the controls activate. The gear shift slots snugly into the gates, the clutch is progressive and the electronic throttle well judged.
The steering is perhaps the best in the business. An absence of play transmits what the front wheels are doing at any legal speed and reacts to the slightest input.
Leaving the city crawl behind and heading north for the beautiful Adelaide Hills sees the Cayman enter the domain it can revel in: tight and twisty roads, up hill and down dale; later leading to long sweepers on the southern leg back towards town.
It's on these roads that the design of the structure comes into play. The Cayman takes the already stiff frame of the Boxster and strengthens and lightens it with a steel roof. Mr Frech says the Cayman S is almost as torsionally stiff as the 911.
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The body rigidity has allowed Porsche to fit suspension that's stiffer than the Boxster. On bumpy sections, that can make the going jiggly inside the cabin, but it also means the car hunkers down and stays there in serious cornering.
All the while there's that mechanical and sports exhaust soundtrack that's been aurally tuned (Porsche used dummies with electronic 'ears' to calibrate the sound inside the cabin).
The brakes, meanwhile, require a firm prod but wash off speed with indecent haste.
The Cayman S has a thirst for fuel when driven in a sporty manner: the onboard computer read about 18 L/100 km after a hard day's drive. Officially, the manual returns 15.3 L on the urban cycle (16.3 L for the auto); 7.8 L on the highway (7.9 L for the auto); an official combined consumption of 10.6 L/100 km (11.0 L for the auto).
The Cayman S offers significant safety systems. There's a switchable electronic stability control, six airbags and seat belt pre-tensioners and force limiters to help avoid or mitigate accidents.
The Cayman S, then, behaves like a proper Porsche. Which, as we trundle back into the centre of Adelaide, brings us back to the central theme: why would anyone buy a 911 when the Cayman S offers so much of the same experience?
Porsche is sticking to the script the car won't cannibalise 911 sales, rather it's a feeder to the 911 range.
'The 911 is our performance icon,' says Mr Frech. 'The Cayman S is targetted at young individualists; the 911 is an older, more conservative, status-conscious buyer. Buyers will move up to a 911, not down from it. The experience from overseas (where it has already gone on sale) confirms this.'
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<h3>The Cayman S Down Under</h3>
Porsche Cars Australia managing director Michael Winkler warns supply will be kept tight so examples of the Cayman S sitting around on showroom floors will be few.
'We're not shooting for sales records. We're not going to force numbers, so that the margins stay healthy and the customer retains resale values,' Mr Winkler says. 'We're not going to engage in what I call `unnatural acts' - discounting.'
He says there's been about 30 orders secured with deposits from eager customers who've made their decision on overseas reports about the car.
For such a high-performance car, there's a surprisingly gentle maintenance schedule: oil change every 30,000 km; three inspections to 100,000 km. A standard service costs from $220.
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Porsche Cars Australia says it is expecting to sell between 100 and 150 Caymans a year.
Mr Winkler and Rolf Frech, director of Complete Vehicle Engineering, say a decision to release a lower-spec (and cheaper) entry-level Cayman has not been made by Porsche's board.
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<h3>Where the Cayman S fits into the range</h3>
<h3>
Boxster</h3>
Body:
2-door cabriolet
Engine:
2.7-litre flat six, midship
Power:
176 kW
Torque:
270 Nm
Transmission:
five- or optional six-speed manual, five-speed Tiptronic, rear-wheel drive
Weight:
from 1295 kg
Performance:
0-100 km/h: 6.2 seconds; 256 km/h top speed
Price:
from $107,400
<h3>Boxster S</h3>
Body:
2-door cabriolet
Engine:
3.2-litre flat six, midship
Power:
206 kW
Torque:
320 Nm
Transmission:
six-speed manual, five-speed Tiptronic, rear-wheel drive
Weight:
from 1345 kg
Performance:
0-100 km/h: 5.5 seconds; 268 km/h top speed
Price:
from $132,500
<h3>Cayman S</h3>
Body:
2-door coupe
Engine:
3.4-litre flat six, midship
Power:
217 kW
Torque:
340 Nm
Transmission:
six-speed manual, five-speed Tiptronic, rear-wheel drive
Weight:
1340 kg
Performance:
0-100 km/h: 5.4 seconds; 275 km/h top speed
Price:
from $148,500
<h3>911 Carrera</h3>
Body:
2-door coupe
Engine:
3.6-litre flat six, rear
Power:
239 kW
Torque:
370 Nm
Transmission:
six-speed manual, five-speed Tiptronic, rear-wheel drive
Weight:
1395 kg
Performance:
0-100 km/h: 5.0 seconds; 285 km/h top speed
Price:
from $195,225
Prices and details correct at publication.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/review-new/cayman-and-a-hot-tin-roof/2006/01/24/1138066792540.html
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